History is a complex collective tapestry woven from countless threads of individual stories, experiences and viewpoints. The installation, equipped with directional speaker, invites the audience to immerse themselves and rotate around such different stories, changing their angle of perspective without changing their seat. The initial sound installation is conceived as a custom-built merry-go-round to be placed preferably in an indoor setting, or an outdoor setup with access to power. Comprised of 6 seats with 6 speakers, it has a radius of 1.5 meters and needs a solid base to hold its weight. The speakers can be used separately and independently, without the merry-go-round metal structure, as an immersive installation.

Merry-Go-Round

Conceived as a multi-layered experience preserving memory and reshaping how Lebanon&rsquo;s war is remembered, Maabar is more than a podcast. Expanding from sound to converge with image, Maabar is developing an animated audio film to reach broader audiences and spark a deeper engagement with Lebanon&rsquo;s painful past. Created in collaboration with an animator, the film interweaves sound recordings, photographs collected from war photographers, and animation to form a cohesive visual narrative. The visual will not subsume the audio, but will enhance it. Always in service of the sound, never distracting from it, the animation acts as a guide to the emotional world of the stories, balancing sound and image in pursuit of the voices.

After 300 hours of recording, over 120 interviews, and three seasons of 27 episodes, the film distills the podcast&rsquo;s manifold themes into a few confrontational ones, such as the refusal of silence, the foreign exoticization of Lebanon, the absurdity of war, and the enduring trauma of the past in the present. Drawn from the same raw material, the film is both a reflection on and a response to the stories collected. A&nbsp;place where Maabar&rsquo;s co-creators engage more directly with the voices listened to for years, to trace a journey from descent and disorientation to coping, madness, and collapse.

While the film offers no answers, it speaks to many: to the war generation, who were never heard; the postwar generation, who were never taught; today&rsquo;s youth, facing renewed conflict; and the diaspora, seeking connection to a fractured past. For global audiences, especially those in places marked by endless war, Maabar offers a chance to listen deeply, reminding us that war is not a remote abstraction, but a brutally destructive force that never results in a just and lasting peace.&nbsp;

Sakatet L Nes: 1975 - 1990.

Maabar is more than a podcast&mdash;it&rsquo;s an ongoing attempt to make sense of memory, silence, and the war&rsquo;s unresolved echoes in Lebanon today. Listening can be powerful, even transformative. But some reflections are too heavy to carry alone. That&rsquo;s why Maabar also steps into classrooms, festivals, panels, and workshops&mdash;to open space for dialogue, collaboration, and shared processing.

Our activities are not just about presenting the podcast, but about engaging with the questions it raises. How do we carry memory across generations? What does it mean to archive lived experience? How do we begin to process collective trauma that remains unspoken, or unacknowledged?

Through public talks and private discussions, we&rsquo;ve met listeners, researchers, artists, and students who are also wrestling with these questions&mdash;about the war, about Lebanon, and about the histories that still shape our present. Whether through public listening sessions, neuroscience and memory (as in our April 13 conversation with Albert Moukheiber), or the ethics of wartime documentation (as discussed at Le Court in Clermont-Ferrand), we explore the terrain where personal story meets public responsibility. Along the way, we&rsquo;ve been invited to universities in Beirut and Ghent, joined panels in Paris and Sarajevo, and will contribute to international conferences on oral history and reconciliation in Krakow.

We&rsquo;re open to more. If Maabar resonates with you&mdash;if it inspires a question, a project, a collaboration&mdash;reach out. We&rsquo;re here for the conversations that don&rsquo;t have clear answers, and for the connections that emerge when we reflect together. Memory isn&rsquo;t static. It grows in the telling, and expands in the listening.

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Activities

Maabar&rsquo;s sound installations create a different kind of listening, one that brings people together, physically and emotionally. Unlike podcasts, which are often heard alone, and inward, these installations invite shared encounters merging the line between intimacy and public experience. They make space for listeners to connect not only with the narrators, but with one another.

At their core, the installations extend the podcast&rsquo;s exploration of multi-perspectivity. Each one is designed to reflect how memory shifts depending on where you&rsquo;re standing, and how the same moment can be experienced in vastly different ways. Using directional speakers and speakers embedded in objects, the sound guides listeners to interact with the space in different ways, pulling them into different stories and viewpoints.

Installations are adapted to the spaces they inhabit. They respond to their surroundings, while also reshaping them - whether it&rsquo;s a gallery, a public square, or a quiet room. What doesn&rsquo;t change is their goal: to make stories feel close, immediate, and hard to ignore. They are built to travel, in Lebanon and beyond, reaching people who may never have found Maabar otherwise.

The Merry-Go-Round (2023) uses a rotating, circular structure we often remember from childhood. Directional speakers play different voices, each telling a different story. As the platform turns, listeners remain seated while perspectives shift around them. Each voice holds equal weight - there is no starting point, no central truth from which others deviate. The experience is collective, yet deeply intimate: voices echo from either side, distinct but connected. The installation invites reflection on how stories are told and heard, and how a mosaic of perspectives can bring us closer to a shared experience. When the lines that divide us begin to blur, we are no longer &ldquo;the Other.&rdquo;

Point of View (2025) embeds speakers into objects, placing listeners directly in the narrator&rsquo;s physical and emotional space: seeing, hearing, and feeling from their point of view. Unlike traditional storytelling, this installation invites people to inhabit another&rsquo;s memory with full sensory closeness, encountering the moment not just as a witness, but as a participant. Composed of three linked pieces - the gaze, the choice, and the other side - the installation explores unexpected moments of connection and disconnection. A shared glance in the dark, the unbearable burden of choosing who lives and who dies, the intimacy of falling in love across enemy lines through voice alone. These are stories where perspective shapes everything, and understanding begins with proximity.

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Projects